This
is a slightly-edited excerpt from a chapter (“The Psychology of
Forever”) I wrote back in 1996, but which has never been published.
Although I might write some of it a little differently today, I
haven’t changed my views about any of the ideas expressed here. You
will find this essay along with related thoughts as a chapter in the
forthcoming book, Death and Anti-Death Volume 7, edited by
Charles Tandy.

Growing old
is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.
André MauroisThe Art of Living, “The Art of Growing Old” (1940).

Life is good, some will grant. Life offers numerous paths and
possibilities. But isn’t life good only because it is limited in
length? If we lived indefinitely, potentially forever, wouldn’t we
eventually stagnate, lose interest, become bored?

Certainly this belief has been pushed at us for centuries through
stories, from Jonathan Swift’s Struldbruggs in Gulliver’s Travels
(1726), Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew (1844-5), and Karel
Capek’s The Makropoulos Secret (1925), to more recent tales
as presented in John Boorman’s 1974 movie Zardoz.

The
world of Zardoz, set in the distant future, has been divided
into two realms: the Vortex, where dwell the immortals, and the
Outlands, home to the short-lived Brutals. The decadent, impotent
immortals have lost their vitality. An especially intelligent
Brutal, played by Sean Connery, invades the Vortex, introducing
chaos, destroying their society, and returning the immortals to a
natural state. That is: dead. Even in the heroic
Highlander movie, the grand prize for the sole surviving
immortal (“There can be only one!”) is wisdom-with-death.

I
suspect this cultural tendency to see indefinite lifespan or
potential immortality as a curse serves as a psychological defense
against the historically undeniable fact of human mortality. So long
as mortality was an unalterable part of the human condition, it was
understandable if we fooled ourselves into believing that physical
immortality would be dreadful. I am suggesting that mortality no
longer need be accepted as inevitable. If indefinitely extended
longevity is achievable, continuing to cling to the
immortality-as-curse myth can only destroy us.

To
begin uncovering the errors fueling opposition to extreme longevity,
consider first the distinction between seeking immortality and
seeking indefinite lifespan. Suppose we were to grant that we might
become bored of life, whether it be centuries, millennia, or eons
from now. We might even grant that boredom was inevitable given a
sufficiently extended life. Granting these suppositions for now,
what follows? Only that literal immortality—living forever—would not
be desirable. But forever is infinitely longer than a billion
years. If there were, in principle, some limit to the length of a
stimulating, challenging, rewarding life, we could not know where it
lies until we reached it.

If
immortality should not be a goal, indefinitely long lifespan
can be. If, one day we find ourselves drained, if we can think of
nothing more to do and our current activities seem pointless, we
will have the option of ending our lives. Alternatively, we might
change ourselves so radically that, although someone
continues to live, it’s unclear that it’s us. But we cannot know in
advance when we will reach that point. To throw away what may be a
vastly long stretch of joyful living on the basis that forever
must bring boredom and stagnation would be a terrible error.

Stagnation sets in when motion ceases. Motion, change, and growth
form the core of living. We will stagnate if we either run out of
the energy to stay in the flow of life, or if we exhaust all the
possibilities. I suggest that while some people run out of energy at
any age, doing so is not inevitable. I further suggest that life’s
possibilities are literally unbounded. Certainly we can see this to
be true for millennia to come.

Theoretically arguments from physics, cosmology, and computer
science indicate that even true immortality and infinite variety
cannot be ruled out. First, then, why do many people run out of
energy and settle into a stagnant decline? If we survey the
diversity of personalities around us, one thing will become clear:
People get bored because they become boring.

Sadly
many people don’t wait for old age to become boring. The prospect of
extended longevity repels them since even their current lives are
dull. What makes them become weary? They make themselves that way in
several ways.

1:
They have developed a habit of thinking boredom-inducing thoughts.
They tell themselves there is nothing to do, that “it’s not worth
it”, that activities are boring when they need not be.

2:
Their vision of their lives consists of a narrow tunnel-reality,
like the view of a mountain range seen through the end of a pipe.
Having become so used to the way they live, they fail to see the
opportunities beckoning them.

3:
They have become apathetic. Laziness sets in when people develop an
attitude that says “Entertain me”. Apathy reflects a disengagement
from living. Laziness forms a vicious circle with underactive
imagination. If we are too lazy to imagine new careers, new
activities, new places to go, we will see only the old and familiar.
If we see only the familiar and unchallenging, we will find it hard
to get excited.

4:
Related to these problems we find an unwillingness to experiment.
Whether fed by fear or laziness or lack of imagination, getting out
of the youthful habit of experimentation eventually produces a
jaded, dull individual.

There may be no excuse for the young to be bored, but what about
the “old”? Two factors explain why boredom or stagnation have been
thought to naturally accompany old age. One of these is a
self-reinforcing belief that youthful activities are not for the
old. Younger people may snicker if they see someone in their 70s on
roller blades. Children seeing their parents seeking adventure may
tell them to “act their age”. Until recently, the chronologically
old were advised not to engage in vigorous exercise, and to avoid
too much excitement. Believing in and acting on such ideas, no
wonder seniors become old! Part of life extension involves
challenging traditional beliefs about “appropriate” behavior for
older persons.

A
second factor accounting for the association of stagnation,
passivity, and boredom with old age is the biological aging that has
always accompanied the passing of the years. Later years sometimes
bring weakened muscles, arthritis, vulnerability to infection,
memory loss, and confusion. Given these conditions, stagnation comes
easily. This second factor cannot be entirely separated from the
first. Studies increasingly show that people in their 80s and 90s
benefit enormously from a program of exercise that builds up to a
strenuous level. Many of us can think of seniors who have never
stopped using their brains. Studies now confirm the truth in the
maxim “use it or lose it”.

By
rejecting the belief that passing years must bring infirmity, it is
possibly to greatly reduce most symptoms of aging. Other measures,
such as sticking to a high-nutrient, low-calorie diet, and use of
supplements perhaps including human growth hormone, can preserve
youthful vigor and performance. And we can reasonably expect the
biological sciences of the 21st century to understand and
overcome the aging process entirely.

The
universe offers limitless possibilities. Whether we ever stagnate is
up to us. We can choose to bore ourselves at any time, or we can
renew our commitment to involvement in life. How could we exhaust
things to do and learn? Never will we face a shortage of new
activities, new understanding, and new experiences. Some scientists
expect that we will come to complete physics, so that one day there
will be an end to new discoveries in that field. Even if we do
achieve such a consummation of physics, we cannot exhaust the
technological applications of physical laws. Technological
innovation may continue forever.

Even if, in the remote future, technological innovation should
reach an impenetrable barrier, other realms will remain open. We
will always have innovative art: music, graphic art, writing, dance,
and innumerable forms as yet unconceived. We can experiment with new
social forms and invent any number of new games.

In
imagining the possible lives of the future, we should not limit
ourselves by projecting all our current human limitations and forms
of life.

Having lived only a few decades, our perspectives tend to be mired
in the present. Taking the long view, we observe continual
evolution: In the early universe the principles governing the
interaction of matter and energy evolved. Our familiar “laws” of
physics developed from different principles in the early universe.
Following the evolution of the early universe came the formation of
galactic clusters, galaxies, suns, and planets. On our planet, and
probably myriads of others through our vast universe, chemical
evolution began. The development of self-replicating chemicals and
proteins led to biological and genetic evolution. A few million
years ago human beings appeared. For many millennia humans changed
little, still under the selection mechanisms of genetic evolution.
But humans stood out from the rest of the animal kingdom: we had
brains with a large neocortex that allowed self-aware thinking. Our
higher intelligence let us create technology, at first crude and
limited.

The
advent of technology sped up the pace of evolutionary development.
The formation of planets and galaxies took millions or billions of
years. Life didn’t appear on Earth for a billion years. Intelligence
took more billions. Technology appeared many thousands of years
after conceptual awareness. But once technology appeared, the
throttle was pushed down. Social change accelerated, psychology
began to change, moral evolution moved forward, and scientific
progress took off. The scientific method is little more than three
centuries old.

In
the second half of the 20th century we reached a new,
still swifter stage of evolution. Two developments will lead to
radical and rapid transformations: The discovery of the genetic code
along with a growing ability to modify it, and the invention of
digital computers. Many humans seem to think that they are “it”—that
evolution has culminated in them, that no higher form is possible or
likely. What misplaced arrogance! Why should we expect an upper
limit on new forms of evolution? Why should we think that we’ve
reached the end of the road?

All
evidence points to a continued acceleration of evolutionary change.
Evolution no longer depends on the slow change in our genes. Now we
are learning to correct and improve our genetic structure. We are
building intelligent machines. We will learn to achieve a synthesis
of human and machine, enabling us to surpass the capacities of
either alone. This way lies superhuman intelligence, indefinite
lifespan, and a powerful ability to choose our physical form, our
emotions, even our basic identity. If new forms of evolution and new
peaks in our development lie ahead, then stagnation is unnecessary
and pessimism foolish.

Hold on! some may cry. All this may be true, but aren’t we
eventually doomed? Doesn’t physics, in the form of the Second Law of
Thermodynamics, ensure that in the far reaches of the future—an
inconceivably distant time from now—the universe will grind to a
halt as entropy reaches a peak? The Second Law tells us that any
closed system (one in which no energy enters from outside) tends
towards disorder and decay. The extropic, evolutionary process that
give birth to life on Earth was powered by the Sun. But a few
billions years from now, the Sun will have burned all its nuclear
fuel and will fade out. This will occur throughout the universe.
Much further in the future—so far that the time units have no name,
only mathematical notations—protons will decay. Protons form part of
the nucleus of atoms. How, it may be asked, can life survive and
evolution continue into that enormously distant future?

For
most of us, of course, we’re now talking about a future so far off
that we may be unconcerned. We can take life as practically
unbounded. Some of us, myself included, cannot feel entirely
satisfied with such an attitude. I’d like to show, in principle at
least, that possibilities can already be seen that may allow
literally infinite evolution. This can be done without denying the
well-established Second Law and without having to invoke
supernatural forces. I suggest that: No physical limit prevents
endless growth.

Our
conscious selves currently reside in our biological bodies and
brains. Scientifically, no fundamental requirement exists for life
to be tied to carbon-based biology. Going the carbon route turned
out to be the path of least resistance to unconscious nature. Carbon
forms a million compounds, allowing it to form part of numerous
building blocks of living organisms. It is entirely possible that
life has evolved on other planets based on another element, such as
silicon. Artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists have
already laid the groundwork for new life forms using silicon or
optical processors. We may one day migrate the neural functioning
that generates our consciousness and personalities onto a different
platform.

To
a reasonable approximation, we can liken our minds to software
running on the hardware of our brains. In principle, we should be
able to move out of our current, wet, soft, vulnerable hardware,
into new durable, modifiable hardware. Consciousness depends on
processing of information rather that on any particular material
embodiment. If this is the case, there are at least three serious
proposals for making infinitely long life spans possible, despite
the dreaded Second Law.

Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, always a large-scale thinker,
suggests that as the universe gradually cools towards absolute zero
(assuming the universe will continue to expand), we could experience
an infinity of subjective experience by slowing down our thinking
processes to use less and less energy. A finite amount of remaining
energy could produce an infinite amount of subjective thinking time.
Dyson’s proposal depends on the universe having insufficient mass to
halt its expansion through gravitational attraction.

This majority view among physicists may turn out wrong. If the
universe is massive enough, eventually expansion will cease and it
will start to collapse back in on itself. In this scenario, it seems
that rather than frigid doom we would meet a fiery apocalypse—a Big
Crunch where the universe becomes infinitely hot and dense.
Physicist Frank Tipler, best-selling author of The Physics of
Immortality, believes such an end can be avoided. He spends
hundreds of pages arguing that we (as a vastly advanced
intergalactic future race) could control the collapse of the
universe so as to extract energy from it that would allow a
subjective infinity of existence. The more the universe contracted,
the faster our thinking would speed up. We would never run out of
time.

A
third proposal I’ve seen explained by Michael Price, suggests that
we may come to duplicate the forces that originally brought about
the Big Bang. We may be able to renew our energy by creating
entirely new universes.

We
have no grounds for asserting the necessity of limits to life. We
can find no impenetrable barrier to endless life. We have no room
for any dogma about the inevitability of stagnation. Let us keep our
options open. Even at the farthest extremes of time, life may
continue without bound.